Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is Neil J. Wilkof, Annsley Merelle Ward, Nicola Searle, Eleonora Rosati, and Merpel, with contributions from Mark Schweizer. Read, post comments and participate! E-mail the Kats here

The team is joined by Guest Kats Rosie Burbidge, Stephen Jones, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy, and by InternKats Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo, Hayleigh Bosher, Tian Lu and Cecilia Sbrolli.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

Every six months we say goodbye to our three-strong squad of guest Kats and welcome their successors. Goodbyes and our sincere thanks to go outgoing bloggers for 1 July to 31 December 2014: Rebecca Gulbul, Lucas Michels and Marie-Andrée Weiss. The IPKat and Merpel wish them all the very best in their future endeavours, be they commercial. professional or social media-related. It has been fun to work with you. While it is invidious to single out individuals, a special "thank-you" is owed to Marie-Andrée for filling in with some extra cover when members of the regular blog squad have been absent or unavailable.

So now we introduce our three new colleagues for the period 1 January 2015 (that's today, so please get used to the new year) to 30 June. In alphabetical order, by surname, they are:

Suleman Ali. Suleman, a frequent occasional contributor to this weblog [you can name-check him here], is a European and UK patent pttorney. He started his career in 1996 at J.A. Kemp, working primarily in the biotech and medical fields, but now mostly works for ip21, K2 IP and his own consultancy, Holly IP. With extensive experience working with small biotech companies and university tech transfer offices, Suleman enjoys advising such organisations on the strategies they should follow. He has prosecuted patent applications in different territories and has taken part in many European oppositions and appeals. Suleman's DPhil was on genetic susceptibility to HIV. He also writes for his own blog IP Trendsand for IPCopy. You can read more about Suleman here.

Tom Ohta. Tom, An associate solicitor at London law firm Bristows, is a dispute resolution specialist with a particular interest in copyright, having cut his teeth on the SAS Institute v World Programming software litigation before the courts of England and Wales and the CJEU. As a bumper copyright year, 2014 yielded fertile grounds for Tom to contribute to a range of publications including the IPKat, 1709 Blog, Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice and Intellectual Property Magazine. Tom enjoys speaking on current developments, including at the IPKat’s online copyright enforcement event and to senior officials at the WIPO/British Copyright Council training course on copyright. Read more about Tom here and on Twitter @tom_ohta.

Valentina Torelli,
Admitted to the bar in Bologna (Italy), Valentina has been living in Spain for the past two years, first in Alicante where she graduated from the Magister Lvcentinvs programme and now in Madrid where she is currently practising as lawyer. Valentina is an enthusiast for IP and media matters and litigation, trade marks and ITC being the areas of her main interest. Always attracted by creativity, she usually molds her inspiration into photography although she likes ranging among other ways of expression, as she has recently done with her occasional guest blogging [you can name-check her here and on the 1709 Blog here]. Valentina loves cats. You can read more about her here.

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